An unsuitable blog for a woman...

January 31, 2010

Jane here, wondering how much it matters these days whether
people spell correctly. I’ve started my stint judging short stories, and so far
the standard is extremely high; but now and then I’m spotting spelling
mistakes, and I can’t help marking the story down a few points because of it.

Mind you, there are plenty of people around who say it
doesn’t matter one bit nowadays. We’ve got computers to correct our spelling,
if we need it corrected, but surely, they say, we don’t. We should not be bound
by arbitrary rules, especially in a language like English, whose complex
roots make spelling a nightmare anyway.

Shakespeare, this reasoning runs, didn’t fret about
consistent spelling; he followed the practice of his time and spelt words any
which way he pleased. And look what happened to him! I’ve never been lucky
enough to read an original MS by the Bard, so I hope this much-used argument is
true. If it is, why should we lesser mortals fret about it?

I must admit I’ve some sympathy with this view. It’s true
that words like accomodation…diferent…plesant…are quite understandable, even
though I’ve got those irritating little lines under each because my word
processor disapproves of their looks and is ordering me to correct them. Why
should I, if you can understand what I’m writing?

Nor do I subscribe to the idea that if people can’t spell,
they must obviously be stupid. Rubbish! If you are in any doubt, go and work
for an organisation which receives plenty of letters or emails, and requires
you to contact their senders. I was in this position at the BBC, where listeners’
correspondence was an important ingredient of the programmes we made; we knew,
or we very soon learned, that some of the best ones were written by bright people
whose thoughts were original and who could articulate them brilliantly. They
just happened not to be able to spel for tofee.

And yet…and yet…

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, and can’t forget how important
spelling was thought to be when I was at school. Maybe I’m just a nit-picker,
and have gone through one too many manuscripts or ARCs with a fine-tooth comb.
But I find myself a little put off a text, whether I’m reading it on the
Internet or in print, if it’s full of spelling mistakes. The odd error – OK,
we’re all guilty of that. But there’s really no excuse for a lot of inaccurate
spelling, especially in these computerised times. It makes me feel the author
hasn’t cared enough about the final effect her work will have to add that extra
bit of spit-and-polish.

So I’ll continue to reflect my old-fashioned quest for
correctness as I mark this interesting crop of short stories. I have to
whittle the entries down to my Top Ten before I then compare notes with the
other judges. And of course if I find stories that I consider works of genius
no matter how they are spelt, I’ll say so. Meanwhile, I’d better run my spell
checker over this post…

January 28, 2010

I missed my Tuesday! Is that better or worse than finding I'd jumped in ahead of my place in line? Plenty of excuses--Anthem for Doomed Youth is now 12 days past deadline (I've promised my editor he'll have it before Left Coast Crime; he's going to be there, and I want to be able to look him in the face). And I bought a new computer. Now trying to get it set up and I gather I can't transfer some of my programs from XP to Windows 7. Yesterday when I should have been blogging I was involved with a young man from CallANerd, who came to give me an estimate on setting up for me and left having sold me a router. Unfortunately all their routers were stuck in a delivery truck somewhere in the snow-bound Siskiyous. Charming young man, though. Came to Oregon from Louisiana, having lost his job after the hurricane. He writes fantasy, though not yet published.

Here, it's hard to believe in snowbound Siskiyous (the mountains between Oregon and N California). We've had such a warm January that crocuses are in bloom already and slugs already munching on them. Here are last year's crocuses--pic taken in March! I haven't time to take a pic of this year's. Back to work...

January 27, 2010

Rhys here--and Ican't believe how quickly Wednesday comes around. It seems that I only posted yesterday and now I have to come up with something else to say. This wouldn't be so bad but I've just done a week of posting on my other blog, Jungle Red Writers, and I'm this week's guest blogger on the Sisters in Crime blog. And I have an essay to write for the MWA annual. Oh, and copy edits are due on my next Royal Spyness book called Royal Blood.

No wonder I dreamed last night that I was back at school and I was about to take an exam and realized that I had been out of school for so long that I had no idea of the material. Does anyone else have that dream? I dream it when I'm trying to do too much. My other stress dreams are having to pack in a hurry to catch a train and one in which I'm an actress standing in the wings and realizing that I have no idea of my lines. Then I rush around back stage trying to find the script and can't find it and my moment to step onstage gets closer and closer....

I did a course on dream pyschology when I was at University in Freiburg, Germany and I have been fascinated with dreams ever since. I find it interesting that many people dream the same stress dreams and use the same images to denote fear--classic one being small child being chased by wild animal.

Since I studied the subject I have been able to interpret most of my dreams and those of friends as well. I find that if you get a person to tell you their dream, they will use words that explain what it's really about. Fascinating.

So do my fellow Lady Killers have the same stress-dreams? Do you all dream in color? I know I do--full color, smells, sounds.

January 25, 2010

Ann Parker here, Monday's child, with a quick post (because I'm up to my eyeballs in all kinds of deadlines). Rhys's recent post on the power of life and death struck a chord with me. Perhaps because I'm currently in the same position, trying to decide not only the method of murder but what clues need to be dropped hither and thither to "play fair." I'm beginning to think I should go back and make a little list of what I've done in the past so I can keep track of how various folks have died and what sort of clues I sprinkled around, just so I don't repeat myself. I find I tend to veer towards using the same kinds of clues (and murderous tools) that I've used before. But I certainly don't want to repeat myself.

January 24, 2010

Last week was a musical week. On Saturday (17th) I participated in a Renaissance Masque. I play the recorder. A group of recorder-players joined viols, singers, dancers and a Loud Band--Cornets and Crumhorns--for an afternoon rehearsing, followed by a potluck supper and a very amateur performance for a small paying audience. Had to be a small audience as we just about filled up the space. Here's a pic of the same event last year. Note yours truly extreme left.

On Thursday I went to the Eugene Symphony concert, one I'd been looking forward to for ages. This season they're doing all the Beethoven piano concertos, under our new music director, Danail Rachev. They played the third this time, with Mihaela Ursulaesa as soloist. She was wonderful, especially in the slow movement, which I don't think I've ever heard better played. As if that wasn't attraction enough, they added Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, a marvellous supersensitive performance that brought out every nuance of emotion. If it weren't that I didn't want to snuffle, I would have been weeping. The more I hear of Rachev, the better I like his conducting.

Then on Saturday (23rd), when I should have been writing, was the regular monthly meeting of EARS (fortuitous and fortunate acronym for the Eugene American Recorder Society chapter. 8 or 9 of us turned up this month--it varies. Most of what we played was by everyone's favourite composer, Anon. The periods ranged from 15th to 20th century (the latter not Anon but I can't recall his name). It's always both exhausting and uplifting. Just wish I had more time and energy for practising.

Jane here, and the surprising thing I’ve discovered was triggered
by Rhys’s post this week. She remarked about the dearth of original and clever
methods of murder in contemporary fiction

I started to think, “Oh, but surely, there must be some.” I
reflected on what I’d been reading, and then, better still, I checked my list
of books read. I gradually realised that I'm reading hardly any mysteries
with a contemporary British setting, say during the last decade and a half.

Of course I enjoy plenty of mysteries written in the
past fifteen years, indeed in the past fifteen months. But their settings are
usually further back in time – from the 1960s, which I’m not young enough to
classify as history, right to the classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Or if the time-frame is modern, the stories take place in America, France, Italy,
Scandinavia…not many in Britain, even when the writers are British.

My list of books read has brief one-line notes summarising my opinions.
Over the past couple of years, almost every mystery set in Britain in the 2000s
or the 1990s had the comment “couldn’t finish it,” followed by either “couldn’t get interested”, and/or “too dark” or “too violent”.

In no way am I implying these books aren’t good. Having not
read them, how could I? And anyway many are by famous, well-reviewed, popular
authors. That’s why I chose them. They just aren’t to my taste, that’s all.

Well now, I like historicals, so my list is weighted towards
settings from the past. I also like stories that switch between the time now,
and time then. But I also enjoy almost any kind of traditional mysteries; I hesitate to
use the dreaded word “cosy,” because that can be taken as “light and fluffy,”
whereas some of those that work best for me are serious and have dark patches.

But not many authors, it seems to me, are coming up with
traditional mysteries that take place here and now. If my
impression is right, that’s surprising, and worrying. Honourable exceptions exist, very honourable indeed: P.
D.James, Reginald Hill, Simon
Brett…there must be others.

But how many others? Do they exist, and am I just looking on
the wrong parts of the bookshelves? Or don’t they exist? If not, why not?

January 20, 2010

Today I have to decide how to kill somebody. What a fantastic feeling of power. I had intended to hit him over the head with a statue, but now I'm rethinking. Some more subtle and ingenious way that will have the cops baffled and let Molly Murphy look smart for once? How about the speckled band through the keyhole?

Isn't it interesting that we've moved away from all this? We've moved completely from the howdunit to the whydunit. It really doesn't matter if someone is shot/stabbed/poisoned or bludgeoned any more, except to the point that it reveals something about the killer and the aspect of premeditation. I don't think I've read a contemporary novel in which there was a particularly clever killing. They are still around in real life--what about that trick umbrella laced with ricin? Or the door knob smeared with some kind of toxin that can be absorbed through the skin?

I'd like to be able to kill my victim with something like that, but unfortunately most of my villains aren't too bright. Neither is my detective. Poor Molly. She's intuitive, she's keen, but she's no Sherlock Holmes. So somewhere before the end of the book she's going to need a stroke of luck if she's going to solve this case.

In the meantime I'm enjoying the knowledge that today I rid the world of 1903 of an evil man. Given the routine way that we calmly dispatch victims, one would expect mystery writers to be psychopaths, and yet they are the nicest group of people you'll ever meet--kind, witty, generous and great to hang out with.

Maybe we get all our frustrations and aggressions out on the page! Maybe writing therapy should be introduced in prisons.

January 19, 2010

Are you organised? Are all your pre-digital photos neatly arranged in albums and labelled? Does every piece of paper that enters your house get read, dealt with, filed or recycled immediately? Or is your kitchen table, like mine, piled with newspaper supplements you really want to read--some day--and grocery store ads that should have been tossed days ago when the new one came out?

The last question doesn't apply if you have kids at home. Even I clear off the table before the grandkids arrive for a visit. That's why I have several cardboard boxes around the house full of cut-out articles and URLs of intriguing websites, and--well, to tell the truth, I never get around to sorting through them when the kids leave, so I'm not sure what's in there. Which is why I have several cardboard boxes...

If only my desk weren't in the same condition. The top layer is notes, maps, reference books, etc. for the book I'm working on, Anthem for Doomed Youth. The second layer is notes for the last book, A Colourful Death (coming out in June), though I did put the books and maps away. The third layer is notes for Sheer Folly. The fourth layer, I think, must be notes for Black Ship. Somewhere at that level is the plan I drew of Constable Circle, the street in Hampstead to which Daisy and Alec moved in that book. I needed it a couple of hours ago but--already 4 days overdue with the present book--I don't have time to hunt thoroughly.

If only I'd filed it! Since I started the second (Cornish mystery) series, I've been too rushed even to create a file folder for each book, as I did for the first 50. It's no good telling me it saves time in the end. I know that.

You'll doubtless be glad to hear I do pay bills and taxes and balance bank statements on time. I also have at least some of my old photos organised, though most of them are in a drawer in their original envelopes. Here's one from the distant past, and I even know who all the people in it are:

Jane here, blogging out of turn, but I’ve just received some
interesting news and wanted to pass it along at once.

There’s a new short story competition for all unpublished
writers, sponsored by the Mystery Women group. The prize for the winner is £100
plus a conference ticket for CrimeFest 2011 – not bad, eh? The winning entry
will be published in Mystery Women’s magazine.

In case you haven’t come across Mystery Women, they are
an important group of writers and readers whose aim in life is to promote and
support crime-writing. They are based over here in the UK but welcomes members
from everywhere, and they are primarily (but by no means exclusively) women. They
organise all kinds of interesting book events, and now it's a
competition for a short story entitled “Mystery Woman” or “Mystery Women”.
Deadline February 28th;the winner will
be announced in May at CrimeFest 2010.

January 18, 2010

Sharan here, out of place and time. I had some problems with weather and Internet connection or I would have checked in sooner. I have lots of stories about my trip to France, including some that might work their way into fiction. I may have to start another blog to tell them all. We wound up, after a lovely two days in balmy Nice, getting snowed in for our last five days.

Eventually, a neighbor came with her tractor and pulled the car up to the road. Then it was a terrifying drive on icy, one-lane chemins before we made it to the autoroute.

On the way, I heard the news about the earthquake in Haiti on the radio. That put things in perspective. I was in the Northridge quake and remember both the trauma and the rapidity with which power was restored and aid arrived for those who had lost their homes. But that was California. It's wonderful to see how the world is rushing to help the Haitians, but I can't help but be cynical. Where was the world when Haiti was just desperately poor? And what about all the other disasters? The 9th ward of New Orleans is still largely unrepaired. Bengladesh hasn't recovered from the tsunami, along with many other countries. The list goes on and on. That's not even taking into account the misery we create on our own. I'm glad that people rally round when terrible things happen. It would be even better if we did the same for those who face daily grinding poverty, lack of drinking water and clean food and the constant threat of attack.

Sorry to be so preachy. I certainly include myself in those who don't pay enough attention to the world's inequities. It probably doesn't help that I've spent the past year studying the end of the world and, no, I don't think the earthquake is a Sign.

I'm adding another photo, taken by Llewyn Maire, of the beach at Nice. May Haiti be this beautiful again soon.